


a new beginning

by sparxwrites



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Farm/Ranch, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Dysfunctional Family, Sibling Bonding, Stardew Valley AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-09
Updated: 2017-06-09
Packaged: 2018-11-11 14:59:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11150829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparxwrites/pseuds/sparxwrites
Summary: Cassandra was the one driving when they finally arrived. In the passenger seat beside her, Percy was curled up, sleeping shallow and fitful – seatbelt off, knees drawn up to his chest, eyes rolling under the thin, bruised skin of his eyelids. The faint, green glow of the truck’s dials made the pale skin and sharp angles of his face look sickly, threw the purple of his newly-acquired scars into sharp, unpleasant relief.(In which Cass and Percy escape their respective prisons, and flee to Middle-of-Nowhere, USA, to live on an old family farm...)





	a new beginning

Cassandra was the one driving when they finally arrived. In the passenger seat beside her, Percy was curled up, sleeping shallow and fitful – seatbelt off, knees drawn up to his chest, eyes rolling under the thin, bruised skin of his eyelids. The faint, green glow of the truck’s dials made the pale skin and sharp angles of his face look sickly, threw the purple of his newly-acquired scars into sharp, unpleasant relief.

Outside the truck, now the engine was off, it was eerily silent, and oppressively hot without the air conditioning running. Used to the steady traffic noises of the city, and the relative chill of Maine, mid-spring rural Alabama was alien in every possible way. She could remember vacationing here as a young child, but that was years ago, distant enough that she had only had hazy memories of a quaint farmhouse, overgrown fields, running through grass well above head-height in a muddied sundress as Julius called after her in alarm.

The farmhouse she’d parked behind looked significantly more dilapidated than the one from her memories. Parts of the roof were bowing in, and there were weeds growing through the cracks between the stones. The fields looked much the same, though the darkness and the unfamiliar sounds of nighttime animals added a layer of unknown menace to them.

Or perhaps, she thought, that was just her. She’d never been afraid of the dark as a child, after all, but now…

“Percival,” she whispered, tearing her eyes away from the night outside the window, and looking back to her sleeping brother. “Percival, wake up. We’re here.” When he didn’t wake, just twitched in his sleep, she reached out and shook his shoulder. “Percy-”

There was suddenly a hand around her wrist, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise against the sensitive tendons on the underside. She managed not to cry out, but only by merit of biting her lip nearly hard enough to bleed as she wrenched free of Percy with as much strength as she could muster. He didn’t try to hold her, but she recoiled from him nonetheless, as he _stared_ at her, uncomprehending and confused, with the blank, terrified eyes of a cornered animal. 

“…Sorry,” he breathed, after a half-heartbeat. Recognition returned to his eyes, and the tension draining out of him as his shoulders slumped. “I didn’t mean to- I- bad dreams. Sorry.”

Cassandra said nothing, stayed with her back pressed against the driver’s seat window. Though there was guilt in his eyes, her wrist still throbbed as she rubbed at it gingerly. She hadn’t noticed initially, when he’d arrived to drag her away from the Briarwoods’ clutches, but there was something _different_ about him. He’d always been the strangest out of all of them, Percival, but now… there new violence, a new _instability_ to him now that unsettled her.

Not that she hadn’t changed, too, in the years they’d been apart – just in a different way. Perhaps she was a hypocrite, for being so hesitant around him, when there was little doubt she was barely recognisable too. 

When it became clear she wasn’t going to respond to his apology, Percy winced, and then sighed. “Did anyone see us arrive?” he asked, eventually. scrubbing the sleep from his eyes with unsteady hands. Despite his nap, he looked like he’d barely slept, eyes red-rimmed and the bags under them just as dark as they’d been before.

“Brother,” said Cassandra, quiet, exhausted. She’d been driving for over twelve straight hours. She just wanted to _rest_. “Don’t you think you’re being a bit paranoid? We’re half a country over, surely they’re not going to have trailed us _that_ far.”

Even as she said it, though, she thought of Percy’s new scars, the hunted-rabbit look in his eyes and the tremor to his hands. Of Lady Delilah’s jewellery heavy around her own throat, and Lord Sylas’ hand clamped tight enough to bruise around her shoulder.

“ _Did anyone see us arrive_?” Percy insisted, a note of almost-terror to the urgency in his voice – and, not for the first time, Cassandra wondered what the hell had happened to him whilst she’d been in the Briarwoods’ care.

She sighed, scrubbing at her own face and struggling to keep control of herself in the face of grinding exhaustion. “No. No, I- the property’s a little ways out from the town. I turned the headlights off, though, as soon as we got close. Unless anyone was waiting for us, we shouldn’t have been seen or heard.” 

“Should’ve left the car out by the road,” muttered Percy, dragging a hand through his hair. “Hidden. Someone might have heard-”

“What’s done is done.” It came out sharper than she’d meant – and, in the silence that hung heavy between them in the aftermath, the dark pressed in even closer around her. She felt like she was suffocating. After holding everything in for the week they’d spent running, up into Canada and then back down to the only family property that could have conceivably been overlooked by the Briarwoods’ eagle gaze, she felt like bursting into tears. “Please, just- let’s go inside. Rest. We can work out what to do in the morning.”

Percy hesitated, and then bowed his head. “You’re right, of course. Sorry. Let’s… get in. Get you to a bed.”

His attempt at brotherly affection fell a little flat, between the awkward space separating them and the _something_ still lurking behind Percy’s eyes, but Cassandra was too tired to care. She simply nodded, and slipped out of the car before he could say anything else.

The front door was locked – though, given the holes in the roof, and the broken windows, it afforded little in the way of security to the place. Still, the spare key was in the same place she remembered from her childhood, beneath a plant pot tucked into a gap in the wood store. It was a little rusted, a little weathered, but it still fit the lock well enough when she tried it.

By the time Percy had bundled their belongings out of the truck – two duffels and a backpack, a pitiful collection of whatever they’d managed to beg, borrow, and steal on the way there – she’d managed to get the door open, with a little shoving, and was poking around inside. 

The entirety of the upstairs, and most of the downstairs, was unsalvageable, she was disappointed to discover. Between the caved-in ceiling, cracked windows, and general creeping rot and plant life, everything other than the entrance hall and downstairs master bedroom was uninhabitable. The ruined kitchen did, however, have several unspoilt cans of food, and the wardrobe in the bedroom had clean, if musty, bedsheets, so she supposed it could be worse.

“In here,” she called, softly, when she heard Percy's footsteps in the entrance hall. A moment later, she heard him grunt, quietly, as he set the bags down on the floor. “This is the only weatherproof room in the whole place.”

“Marvellous,” Percy muttered, dragging a hand through his hair. For just a second, Cassandra heard the old version of her brother in the clipped irritation and dry sarcasm of that single word. “Well, at least we have a bed, I suppose. You should get some rest.”

Cassandra, already in the midst of toeing off her shoes and getting ready to collapse onto the waiting mattress, paused. “What about you?” she asked, the curiosity in her voice flattened somewhat by exhaustion as she looked over her shoulder at him.

Shrugging, Percy flapped a hand at the bed, and let the corners of his mouth twitch up a little when Cassandra slumped face-first onto it with a soft groan. “I slept on the last leg of the drive,” he reminded her. “Besides, I won’t get back to sleep, after- right now. I’ll keep watch, in case anyone comes nosing around, do a little exploring, see if there’s anything useful lying around. Don’t worry about me.”

She hummed, low in her throat, sounding unconvinced even as she pulled the blankets on the bed over her curled-up form. “Are you sure?” she asked, eyelids already fluttering. The drag of sleep, now she was somewhere soft and warm and relatively safe, was inexorable, pulling her down, down…

“Positive, Cassie,” said Percy, gently, though her eyes had already drifted shut, breathing evening out almost immediately into the steady rhythm of a deep, exhausted sleep. “Get some rest. You deserve it.”

He got no answer, other than the faint, unnerving cry of some unknown animal, far beyond the walls of the decaying farmhouse. Sighing softly, Percy settled down cross-legged on the floor next to the bags, and began rifling through them – searching for an extra layer to ward off the faint, damp chill in the air despite the heat outside, and a torch to last him until daylight finally, inevitably arrived.

**Author's Note:**

> the stardew valley au for critical role that no one asked for, but i wrote anyways, bc i’m a sucker for found family / healing narratives, and because the idea of percy and cass learning to love each other and themselves, whilst working a farm and making friends with the locals, was too good to pass up. will i write more of this? who knows.
> 
> come find me @sparxwrites on tumblr, if you fancy.


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